“A guy from Washington state” John Olerud statue unveiled at Bailey and Brayton

After 37 years, 17 MLB seasons, two World Series titles and countless Cougar baseball records, John Olerud’s likeness is now immortalized at Bailey-Brayton Field. On Friday, Oct. 24, Cougar baseball unveiled a bronze statue depicting the Washingtonian and his iconic swing right outside of left field.

On the concourse just outside the third base dugout, Olerud’s statue is long overdue. A career .434 average, .824 slugging and 26 wins on the mound are all the best by any Coug in history. Then you throw in the fact that he is the only Coug to win Baseball America’s Player of the Year award, and it is a no-brainer.

Every year, the NCAA awards the John Olerud Two-Way Player of the Year award. This is because, of course, Olerud holds the NCAA single-season records for home runs (23) and pitching record (15-0). No Coug, nor player in Division I baseball for that matter, has posted a better offensive and pitching season in the same year as Olerud.

One could spend hours listing the records and accomplishments of his playing career. However, when alumni, coaches, friends and family piled onto the concourse for the statue unveiling, all they could talk about was the kind of person that Olerud is.

“Anyone I have ever talked to in professional baseball they go, ‘Hey you’re the head coach of Washington State… have you met John Olerud?” I say, ‘Yeah”. They go, ‘He’s my favorite teammate’,” baseball head coach Nathan Choate said. “I have heard that from 15 to 20 people that say that you have been their favorite teammate.”

All the way from Olympia, Washington, Governor Bob Ferguson made the five-hour drive over to the Palouse to speak at the ceremony. Despite being a Husky himself, Ferguson could not help but attend.

“When [Olerud] was a Cougar, I was a student at the University of Washington,” Ferguson said. “So to be honest, I couldn’t be an Olerud fan when he was shutting down the Huskies year after year after year. Grudging respect, absolutely. Fan? Not so much.”

It was not until after his Cougar days that Ferguson came around to Olerud. In 1990, Ferguson went on a trip to watch a baseball game in every MLB stadium. Eventually, he arrived in Toronto, where Olerud was playing for the Blue Jays.

“It was exciting for me to see a kid from Washington state, Interlake high school [and] Washington State University, being out there competing at the highest level,” he said. “From that moment on, I became a fan.”

During his remarks, Ferguson shared that his daughter is currently playing college softball as both a pitcher and a hitter: an Olerud-esque career path.

“I appreciated being able to tell Katie that the award for the best, most outstanding two-way baseball player in the entire country is named after a guy from Washington state,” Ferguson said.

As exceptional as Olerud’s career was, it becomes easy to forget that his father, Dr. John Olerud, was also a Cougar baseball player. His dad undoubtedly played an immeasurable role in his development.

“John was born into a baseball family,” Dr. Olerud said. “I grew up in a small community in North Dakota where every week on Sunday a team would assemble around a dirt baseball field and play baseball… I grew up loving the game so much for that reason.”

He made sure to imbue that love of baseball into his son, and it showed.

“John’s heroes in life were baseball players,” Dr. Olerud said. “He had pictures of George Brett and Don Mattingly on his bedroom wall. His reading material was Charlie Lau’s book on the art of hitting .300… When he was being recruited at Stanford to play baseball, they asked the applicants to write an essay on if they could spend a day with anyone in history, who would they spend the day with… I’m sure they were expecting… Gandhi and Thomas Jefferson. But, John wrote his about George Brett.”

Olerud and his dad loved the game together. When his son was three years old, Dr. Olerud retired from professional baseball and pursued his career in medicine.

As a doctor, he took an active role in Olerud’s baseball health. He restricted his son from throwing a curveball until he was a junior in high school, out of fear of stunting his pitching ability. When Olerud’s arm would hurt, or faced an injury, Dr. Olerud was there to remedy it.

That did not stop when he got to college. Famously, Olerud collapsed during the winter of 1989 due to a subarachnoid hemorrhage in the middle of an offseason practice. After recovering, it was his father who had him undergo further testing in Seattle to reveal he had a brain aneurysm lurking below the surface.

Thanks to his father’s foresight, Olerud went on to have the incredible career that he did. However, for Dr. Olerud, the playing career was never on his mind.

“My prayers were not for John to be a major league baseball player,” he said. “My prayers were for him to survive and have a family with kids. So, Kelly [Olerud’s wife], you are the answer to a prayer. And Garrett and Jessica [Olerud’s children], you are as well.”

The ceremony also gave a voice to those who played with Olerud. Notably, former Coug baseball player Rob Nichols shared his memories of playing with him all the way from high school through college.

Nichols delivered his remarks right before Olerud and joked that, for the first time since they were 14, he was finally ahead of him in the lineup. He explained that after every game, Olerud and his dad would stay on the field and hit wiffle balls to work on his swing.

Nichols never understood it. When the offseason rolled around, he would see Olerud and his dad continuing to hit wiffle balls and throw bullpens while everyone else was off playing other sports.

The two were reunited in Pullman when they both found themselves on the Cougar baseball team. In 1988, Olerud put together his best season ever, and the Cougs were on the verge of a College World Series.

“We finished with 52 wins that season,” Nichols said. “We ended up obviously not finishing the season with a win, but we were hungry. And we knew that the next year we were going to win the College World Series.”

Then, of course, Olerud suffered his aneurysm. Nichols and his fellow teammates were told that the prognosis was bad, that Olerud may not make it.

“Ollie did come back,” Nichols said. “But he still wasn’t right. He wasn’t Ollie of ‘88. He was Ollie of ‘89. But we had Ollie, and that was okay.”

While Olerud did return, the Cougs’ season was stunted. Their World Series hopes were crushed, but that did not matter much to his teammates.

“We went from thinking we were going to win the College World Series to only winning 37 games that year,” Nichols said. “I can tell you John, your teammates, we’re glad to trade the College World Series for you.”

Olerud meant more to his teammates than the holy grail of college baseball. His personality and presence were more valuable than any piece of hardware.

After hearing the words of his friends, family and teammates, Olerud finally took to the podium.

“See, Rob, this is why I said no,” he said as soon as he grabbed the mic.

That quick remark sums up Olerud’s humility. Despite being the greatest baseball player to don the Crimson and Gray, he gives much of the credit to his team.

“It’s just great to have great people that push you,” he said. “You want to impress your teammates and earn their respect. You want to play well on the field to help the team win. You don’t want to let your teammates down. We pushed each other to be the best that we can be. I’m grateful to be a part of Cougar baseball.”

Olerud’s bronze statue was crafted by Ott Jones, a former WSU tennis player who also sculpted the image of Henry Rono, which sits outside WSU’s track. His visage will now welcome fans to Bailey-Brayton for every game in the Crimson and Gray.

As the single greatest Coug to walk off of Bailey and Brayton, it makes perfect sense that he will be the first thing that fans see when they go to cheer on the Cougs.

Bronze statue of John Olerud unveiled at Bailey-Brayton Field, Oct. 23, 2026.